libya

BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD charts the journey of 19 year old Tecca Zendik, a contestant in the Miss Net World contest, Libya's first every beauty competition. Colonel Muammar Qaddafi hosts this competition and the film includes extraordinary footage of the Colonel. Tecca's story reveals an incredible conclusion no-one could have guessed when private jests transported the beauties to the country feared by the West in the 1980's.

The parallel stories of four Pakistani immigrants in Greece become the trigger for the director to explore the story of his father, a worker in the Perama Shipyard. The background unfolds a most deadly shipwreck, Libyan immigrants found in limbo, as well as a (possibly racist) crime, which was committed during the shooting of this film.

As filmmaker Maria Carolina Telles comes to terms with the death of her father, a man who regretted never making it to the frontlines of World War II, she focuses her lens on the life of another man who had his own unique experience as a civilian in the midst of combat: award-winning war photographer André Liohn.

Featuring real interviews and archive footage, this documentary gives an overview of Gaddafi's tyrannical reign over Libya from his early life until his death in 2011.

Al-Baroni's film deals with part of the life of the well-known Libyan freedom fighter (Suleiman Pasha Al-Baroni), better known as "The Leader", who was born in 1870 in the city of Kabao in the Nafusa Mountains of Libya. He was famous for combining science, religion, politics, poetry and literature, so he became one of the most important freedom fighters in the history of Libya. Libya and contributed to the establishment of the first Arab republic, the Tripolitan Republic, which he participated in establishing in 1918. He was one of the first fighters against the Italian occupation, who confronted him with politics and weapons. He paid a high price for his struggle and was exiled outside his homeland until he passed away in 1940 in Muscat, Oman.

At first glance, Matthew VanDyke—a shy Baltimore native with a sheltered upbringing and a tormenting OCD diagnosis—is the last person you’d imagine on the front lines of the 2011 Libyan revolution. But after finishing grad school and escaping the U.S. for "a crash course in manhood," a winding path leads him just there. Motorcycling across North Africa and the Middle East and spending time as an embedded journalist in Iraq, Matthew lands in Libya, forming an unexpected kinship with a group of young men who transform his life. Matthew joins his friends in the rebel army against Gaddafi, taking up arms (and a camera). Along the way, he is captured and held in solitary confinement for six terrifying months.

Haja Fatma, a mother to eight children, tells the tale of family life in Tripoli during the Libyan Revolution. Women, young and old, all contributed during these hostile months in their own unique way. A human portal into the acts of ordinary people in their hope for freedom.

The second Libyan feature-length film.